Case Number 05249: Small Claims Court

THE SKULLS: NIGHT OF THE LIVING SKULLS

The Charge

The Skulls live at the El Ray Theater, Los Angeles!

The Case

The Skulls, who originally formed in 1977, were one of the seminal punk bands
in the LA scene until the underground movement cracked open like a rotten egg
and sent punk rockers scattering in all directions. However, their influence was
still felt in the younger generation of bands who were raised on a diet of their
music and live performances, especially in their native California, where the
old-school style still has a strong following.

The story of the band seems to go something like this: Billy Bones, the
original singer many years retired, gets cajoled into coming to see a young band
play a live cover of a Skulls song. Of course, he is then lured onto stage to
sing a song with the band. It goes very well. The band asks him if they could
cover another Skulls song in the future. "Hell," he says, "take
'em all. They're just sitting around anyway. I'll even sing 'em for
you."

And lo, the Skulls were reborn for a new generation.

This two-disc set includes a DVD containing the live concert video and all
the extra materials, and the second disc is an audio CD (which is also for sale
separately) containing the performance for your listening pleasure. The set,
which runs about 45 minutes in length, contains the following raucous songs:

Punk rock concert DVDs are always a lot of fun, because the onstage antics
always keep you entertained. The Skulls' singer, Billy Bones, seems to be taking
his un-retirement with great stride, and has a great taunting, sneering aged
punk rock frontman presence, looking like Billy Idol but moving and acting like
Ozzy Osborne in that half-crazed, half-tired sort of way. The rest of his band
flies around the stage in progressive levels of energy based on their age,
something one would expect from an old-school punk band with a 30-year age
difference between its members. The older members are happy to stand still while
the young guitar player barely lands his feet on the ground for entire
songs.

The performance itself, which takes up the majority of this disc, is okay,
but compared to most concert DVDs today, it's lacking in video quality and audio
fidelity. But, after all, this is a punk rock show, and audio fidelity takes a
back seat to raw energy, high-kicks, and energetic performances. Like many bands
of the day, the songs of the Skulls play four-chord variations straight through
with a maniacally metronome punk rock beat, and of course, most songs end
slightly over the two-minute margin. Fans of bands like the Vibrators, X-Ray
Spex, the Stiffs, and other LA-based punk bands of the late 1970s and early
1980s will feel quite at home with the newly re-formed Skulls' sound. For
everyone else...well, they do a great cover of Johnny Cash's "I Walk the
Line." Which is something at least, right?

Video quality is a step below good, and a step above terrible, in the
uncomfortable middle range low-end transfer realm that is very hard to
accurately review. The transfer is a murky, choppy, pixelated affair with some
brutal edges and ugly anti-aliasing creeping in, especially during scenes of
fast movement. Colors are muted in the red, blue, and gray range, and black
levels are moderate. Basically, the transfer looks exactly like it was recorded
live at a punk rock show on moderately expensive equipment. For a punk rock
band, this would probably be a half-decent transfer, but you can't even begin to
compare a disc like this to a real, major-release concert DVDs. This is punk
rock, baby; things are supposed to be ugly. Or at least, I keep telling myself
that.

Audio is a step up, quality-wise, capturing the recording with a
fair-to-impressive range of fidelity (again, punk rock band here). Bass response
is reasonable, and though the track hardly touches the rear channel in any
noticeable way, the performance is captured with authenticity and energy. The
soundtrack is certainly a passable one; and I assure you, it doesn't make you
want to take beer bottles and smash them on your face while skanking around in a
pit, screaming at the top of your lungs. Seriously. And where I come from,
that's a good thing. Oi, oi, oi.

Though the concert itself is nothing to write home about, the DVD includes a
reasonable offering of additional content (not including the aforementioned
full-length audio CD). Included is a wide variety of interview material --
recorded conversations from previous band members, seminal members of the Los
Angeles 1970s punk scene recounting past drunken antics, and a nine-year old kid
who got the Skulls to play at his birthday party. This is of particular note
because it's so gosh-darn cute. As the band plays outside, the birthday boy hits
an empty swimming pool and skates up and down to the music. While the footage is
a peculiar hodge-podge of home videos and pseudo-interviews more likely to
appeal to fans of the band, the casual will find the extra content amusing and
pleasant...The Skulls seem to be genuinely nice guys.

As an added incentive to buy the DVD version, the disc contains the password
for a secret fan website, where additional bonus and never-before seen material
can be downloaded -- always a fun feature for fans.

But overall, this DVD didn't get me too excited. I suspect that this stems
from my own personal feelings on the subject of punk rock. My musical taste from
childhood includes bands similar to the Skulls, and irritatingly, I can name
dozens of old-school punk bands from whom I would rather see a live DVD appear.
The Skulls put on a good enough show, but hundreds of punk bands from the 1970s
to the present day do it just as well, if not better; and frankly, outside of
their native California, the Skulls are hardly the stuff of legend.

This disc does have some things going for it, no doubt. Diehard fans can
hardly go wrong with Night of the Living Skulls, as the disc crams a
well-captured performance together with many extra features and an audio CD to
boot. You have to applaud the low-budget, punk rock do-it-yourself attitude in
an old-school band releasing a live DVD; after all, the DVD availability of
old-school punk bands is slim, so any contribution to the genre is certainly a
good thing. But alas, methinks this disc is not quite good enough to start a
punk rock revolution all over again. A shame, really...I would've been all over
that like white on rice.

Night of the Living Skulls may not be the best DVD, concert-wise, but
it definitely makes me want to go dust off all my old punk and hardcore 7''
records from high school. And that is worth something in my book.